In geology, it’s the visible trace of a fault, which is a fracture where rocks have moved relative to one another. In a broader sense, it represents a weakness or division, as in a political or social issue.
Now, on to the scripture in James. What does it really mean to “confess your faults?”
Like in that faultline in geology, something must give or move, either on the surface of the Earth, or underground, for the faultline to stop producing that pressure and destruction. To see the change in the earth's surface and the destruction it causes, we see pictures and videos that have been recorded in history as to the overall destruction of a magnitude 7, as an example, and what it produced. We have visual and seismic evidence of the power of an earthquake.
What gives way in Christians that causes things to change and move? First, in the scripture in James, it speaks about “confessing your faults.”
“Do you and I really understand how difficult it is and how much courage it takes for a man or woman to confess anything, especially their faults?”
But James speaks to how critical it is to be healed, but first we must come clean with our issues.
It is not always a sin issue that the confessor is speaking about that they did. It may be confessing how difficult it is to be in an abusive relationship at home or at work. It could be a young child trying to speak to the “bullying” they are receiving.
“Confessing one's faults requires that the Lord Himself has brought you to that place of speaking about and repenting, if necessary, the fault.”
A fault in a human is about a complex thing called defects, personality disorders, addictions and the like. It is the underlying crack or faultline that exists in that person waiting for the “right pressure” to come, or the right stressors, and it explodes into an earthquake of confessions. It can lead to destruction and violence within the “shaking” of that person's ground or safe place they lived in.
There is no room for blame or for that confession to be to that person's demise. It is clarified in the Book of James to be a cleansing or healing process of confession.
Boy, does that word “confession” bring back memories for me as a 9-year-old boy.
In this church-school I attended in Dallas, Texas back in 1965, the teachers in class were part of the church, and their discipline included hitting the back of my hand with a wooden ruler. Not too hard, but hard enough to get my attention and for me to stay focused during class. It did not help me once I got into the church, bruised hands and all.
I went to the Parishioner and had to sit in a small closet-type room that was dark. A curtain would be pulled open slightly as I sat on a small bench inside this tiny room. A silhouette of a man appeared and asked me to confess my faults. My sins.
That was not hard to do at age 9. “Where do I begin?”
I made my mother mad today. I did not pay attention in class and got a bruised hand from my teacher. I thought about and daydreamed in class about playing outside instead of Math. My list goes on, and on, and on.
I then had to go back into the church auditorium and kneel on the kneeling bench with a beaded necklace with a Cross. The symbol of Jesus hanging there in ivory on the necklace I had from school.
I had to repeat insignificant prayers repeatedly until my penance was complete according to the man in the dark room. I never felt better after all this prayer and kneeling. Now my hands hurt and my little knees.
There were a bunch of rituals followed in this school and church, and it scared the “Hell” out of me to a degree.
My frustration, and nine-year-old heart had enough.
On the way out of the church service with my Daddy, Mom, sister and brother, I spit into this fountain of water that was deemed holy water.
My Daddy was called in on Monday after work by this man of God to tell him that we were no longer able to attend the school or church from that day forward. It is called excommunication, an official act of excluding someone from participation in the sacraments and services of the Christian Church. My spitting caused all this.
I call it my first “fault-finding” episode in life.
This seemingly innocent act of spitting grew into a deeper faultline inside my soul which manifested later in life at age 18 when I had my first attempted murder charge.
I call it what it was. No blaming anyone or finding fault in them. I deserved my punishment from the church and my parents at home for the spitting.
I do not blame the church either, as the book of James declares to “confess” your faults to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed or made whole. The church could have prayed for me, but it didn’t.
No one prayed for me after spitting into that fountain at home either.
I was not whole or healed until Jesus met me in my earthquake later in life.
I consider what I did in my violence and addiction to a magnitude 10. That number did not exist in the history of earthquakes, as far as a real earth-moving episode in geology. It did however live in the history books of my felony convictions in Dallas County, Texas from 1974-1976.
The suffering that people go through in life is not always a personal fault. In John 9:1-12, Jesus clarifies that the man’s blindness was NOT due to his or his parents’ sin, but “so that the works of God might be displayed in him”.
Like in this story in John 9, I needed Jesus to spit into His hand and make mud from the dirt and rub my blind eyes so I could see. Not physically as in this passage, but in my heart, I was blinded by sin.
“Whose fault, is it?” It was all mine. I sinned as a 9-year-old, and it grew into bigger sins as I got older. I do not blame, nor did I blame my parents for the non-Christian home we lived in.
That church school and church building and the services offered to us as a family never lived out in our home. The teachings in church and kneeling and praying were just a facade for my family. Living one thing on Sunday and acting like the Devil on Monday through Saturday. It was not horrible every day, but it was obvious that my family was not adhering to the truth, trying to be taught on Sundays.
Are some people, even Christians, live with a victim mentality? In other words, is everything that happens to them, somebody else’s fault? The reason they have problems that they have is somebody else’s doing, not theirs. This is true for little children growing up in a horrible home environment. It is a fact that we can become a product of our own environment.
I have known too many prisoners in prison telling me the stories of how they grew up being taught how to put a dirty needle in their veins in their arms and shooting dope by their parents. “Now, do it like Daddy does, okay? Don’t miss the vein and waste Daddys expensive Meth. Shoot it like I taught you and take your time, okay?”
Horrible way to grow up. No wonder they ended up in prison. “The blame game?” No, it is a fact that until Jesus shows up, men in prison, like I was at age 20, have a history of things gone wrong in the home growing up. However, when we get saved by Jesus, the blaming stops, or we will always have a victim mentality attached to our Christianity.
One man in the prison in Oregon I preached in last year, told me his horror story.
As a father of two small boys, he would sit in a chair with his wife nearby watching and his two boys sitting in separate chairs. The family had to watch him shoot drugs, and if they talked, or said a word, or even showed any body language he did not like, he would beat them. That was his story, being lived out just the way he was taught as a little boy.
His sin was being repeated by himself, and he was showing his young sons that violent “fault” in his life, and they could end up like him.
His story went on, as he showed me a letter he had in his hand after I preached.
With tears streaming down his 48-year-old face, he said, “Joe, this letter in my hand is from my boys I abused. This is why I am in prison, Joe. Then he asked me to read the portion he wanted me to read out loud at his crying request. So, I read one paragraph out loud.
Dear Daddy, it has been 20 years since you went to prison. My brother and I want you to know that we forgive you and did forgive you when we were 9 and 10 at the time you left for your long sentence. We love you and want to come to visit you in prison. It took us a long time to find you, but we believe God is wanting to put us back together. Danny is 29 now and I am 30 and we want to make up for the lost time that you have been away. We love you, Daddy, and please write back to us. Your sons, Danny and David.”
“Wow.” I wept with this inmate that day at the Deer Ridge Correctional Facility in Madras, Oregon. He had come to the altar and re-affirmed his commitment to Christ after my preaching. His courage and fortitude to “confess” to me his “faults” and share that letter I read out loud, brought what the scripture that James promised.
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avail much. It was not my preaching or my prayers at that altar that brought the promise. It was that man’s willingness to confess all his junk and release it to God through his true repentance.
The miracle had already happened prior to his coming to church that evening.
He had the letter from his sons in his hand, apparently all during that service. He just wanted to be able to release his burden to the “burden-breaking Savior named Jesus.
It took more than courage and fortitude on his part. His earthquake had already happened 20 years ago in front of his family. It destroyed everything around him that awful day, and years that he used drugs in front of his family. His regrets were deep as the faultlines underground in an earthquake. It erupted and destroyed his home and his family back then.
Yet Jesus decided to intervene and cause his sons; grown men now, to write him a letter and reconcile to their Daddy. Forgiveness was flowing through this man as he wept on my shoulder after I read that letter.
He asked me, “Joe, please pray that when I see my two sons soon, that they will see the change in me.” He confessed his faults by allowing me to read his personal letter from his sons. I prayed for him, and the healing process was evident in his tears and smile afterward. Like a real earthquake, there is damage and loss of life.
California experienced several significant and severe earthquakes in the 1990’s, most notably the 1994 Northridge earthquake. This quake, which caused considerable damage and loss of life, was one of the worst in California history. Northridge was a magnitude 6.7 and it struck the densely populated San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles early in the morning. It was one of the costliest natural disasters in US history, causing an estimated 20 billion dollars in property damage and over 40 billion dollars in economic losses. Freeway overpasses and apartment complexes collapsed, and 72 people died overall.
God allowed one man to take responsibility for his crimes that day in that Oregon prison.
No blaming came from his lips that day. No fault-finding except him revealing all of the damage was truly his fault at that time 20 years ago.
I pray that you and I, as believers in Jesus Christ can come to an end of our faultlines. My prayer is that the underlying pains, heartaches, and traumas will cease.
And like in a real, geological fault, the stones will find their place securely and never move again.
I know one stone that was removed and never used again. It was the stone rolled away, revealing that Jesus was no longer in the tomb.
So, whose fault is it that Jesus died? Was it the Roman soldier who drove the nails into his body?
No, it was mankind's sin that put him on the Cross on that hill called Golgotha.
Sin. My sin and yours. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s Glory.
We may have fallen short and fallen down. We must get up, and try again, and let God rebuild our lives. Faultlines. We all have them.
James 4:11, “Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.”
Blaming and judging and finding fault are a disease that does not show up on the body, but in the body.
Two boys and a Daddy. Two sons who did not turn out like their Daddy in prison. The cycle of addiction and injury was broken. Jesus taught those two boys after their Daddy went to prison to forgive and forget.
We are not judges. We are not in a courtroom with a jury deciding our fate.
We may be guilty as charged in our sin, but the one who will never find fault with you when you repent is the ultimate judge.
His name is Jesus. He is the Rock. A firm foundation. No faultlines in Him. No earthquakes are waiting to happen when we stand on Him. Be assured of His love. No fault there. Can’t find anything in Him except His love for you.
Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins
